


A Lunar's View of the Wyld Hunt

by Tikor



Category: Exalted
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 20:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10974579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tikor/pseuds/Tikor
Summary: From the journal of the No Moon Lunar Tikor, Truth's Retriever.





	A Lunar's View of the Wyld Hunt

The Dragon-Blooded of the Wyld hunt fascinate me. From a safe distance, of course. I have not been in the same room as a shikari since my youth when I saw them cut down my Solar mate who never even learned my name. I've kept an eye on the stars for their movements since that violent day. The Dragon-Blooded's stars are dim, but predictable. Still light enough for this old dog to see.

The central conundrum, the driving question, is why any individual Dragon-Blooded would risk fighting what they term Anathema? They all have available to them opulent lives of leisure, outright pampering, status higher than any mortal of their society could hope to achieve in a lifetime, even at their lowest. Why put that on the line, why walk out on that branch, why _risk_ it? Of course, there are as many answers as there are shikari. Some out of fervently held belief in the Immaculate Philosophy. Some because they came from a terrorized part of the Threshold, chose the razor, and want to keep their former people safe any way they can. Some to regain status they have lost in some political gambit. Some, merely because it is a challenge, and they are Exalted.

I see their lives leading up to their decisions. I see the altered paths they return to when their service is up. It is written in the stars for all to see, like a great tapestry woven by the gods. But so many of their stars go out. If they weren't hunting my friends, my packmates, my fellow Chosen of Luna, I would call it wasteful.

Oh, but it is wasteful! I've read the histories. I know we once fought true enemies as commander and legion, together. We Lunars are the unstoppable juggernauts, the shadows of the moon, the sorcerers of night. There must be some way that we powerful few could save the many Dragon-Blooded from the stories and traditions that send them to their deaths against us. Brute force has prevailed only in keeping our lives, not preventing the Wyld Hunt. Watching the stars is simply that - watching. No answers come forth from watching the patterns of lives wasted. They grow up in places where there is no fork in the path that leads them all away from the venerers' halls. Enough get through their choices and onto the rolls of the Wyld Hunt to constitute a tragedy when we kill them.

Ah, but that might be the key! Where they grow up! We could snatch them in the night, raise them as our own. Tell them the tales of the Oral History, and only when they have their own firm tradition tell them of the Blessed Isle and its shadow of a Realm. What an experiment in the river that would be!

I must be missing something. I cannot be the first to have this idea. I will send message to Tamuz and ask him what that might be. Maybe the Dragon-Blooded draw too much attention to our locations, aiding the Wyld Hunt in some way I do not know because the Silver Pact adapted around it long ago. Or, perhaps it is just too much trouble keeping the Dragon-Blooded ignorant of their kin. Their blood is thicker than most... Though, perhaps it is the _why_. Why should we risk the ire of the mother dragon, to steal her pups from their nurseries? The answer... the answer may be that there is not enough why to justify the risk.

...Not yet.  



End file.
